“It’s very sweet of you love,” he says, “but there’s a few dog-walking friends I haven’t seen yet this morning and I need to let them know.”
“D’you want me to spread the word for you? It must be tough telling the story of it again and again.”
“You’re very kind love, but no. I’d like to see everyone myself, it’s nice to hear how well thought of Jupiter was, you know. You just make the most of your dog and your youth while you’ve still got both.” And he takes one of my hands in both of his and squeezes it tight and it’s my turn to feel all awkward and not know what to say. But it doesn’t matter, because he just gets up off the bench then and shuffles off for another circuit around the park. I look back as I’m leaving and he’s sitting on a bench with Diana’s owner, digging in his pocket for his handkerchief and passing it to her.
When I tell Julie about Jupiter and the old man and how the lady with Diana was sobbing when I left the park, I find myself stupidly, ridiculously crying in her living room. As if I knew the dog, or the man, or was a bona fide dog lover.
She proffers a box of tissues. I take one and then she takes one herself. She’s doing that silent crying thing again with the tears and no sobs. I wish I could cry as elegantly as that. There’s not much that’s elegant about Julie: her hair’s always a mess and her clothes all need ironing – she can make a £100 dress look like something she’s just brought home from the 50p tub at a charity shop. But when it comes to crying, she’s like a Hollywood star. She’s Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind in that dress made out of the velvet curtains.
She smiles at me crying and I smile back and we both know that neither of us is crying for the dead dog, or for the old fella. I blow my nose loudly and she jumps up out of her armchair.
“I’ve got just what we need,” she announces with her long, scrawny arms waving all over the place. And she disappears off into the kitchen leaving me to try and decipher the clanging and rustling.
On the table next to me is a pile of postcards, address side up and a pile of letters, all in their envelopes with the raggedy edge torn across the top. I look across at the desk to see that it’s just plain glass: she’s taken the postcards out to read them. No wonder she’s crying.
But she’s not crying any more. She reappears in the doorway with a tray full of stuff and a big grin.
“OK, we’ve got crisps, we’ve got Jaffa Cakes, we’ve got pickled onions, we’ve got Dairylea Triangles, we’ve got dandelion and burdock and we’ve got genuine Russian vodka that was sitting on a supermarket shelf in Moscow until last week when a friend of mine brought it home and gave it to me!”
I can just about cope with the Jaffa Cake and pickled onion combination and I’m quite excited about the dandelion and burdock, but the triangles? I’m not sure that’s legal once your age is bigger than your shoe size.
“Dairylea Triangles?” I raise one eyebrow at her in a party trick manoeuvre it took me years to perfect.
“No, honestly,” she says. “You think they’re going to be revolting but they are seriously delicious. I would have osteoporosis if it weren’t for these little calcium-infested triangles. I promise you, it’s all the nutrition you’ll ever need in one little round box of silver-coated triangles.”
She pours me a glass of dandelion and burdock with a hefty slug of vodka in it and places a cheese triangle in my hand.
“Doesn’t it make you think of kids’ parties and school picnics?”
It kind of does. But it’s not the dandelion and burdock and the Dairylea that I’m thinking of. I’m thinking about my mum. When I was a kid and my dad had stormed off in a huff or had taken to his bed all day because he was ‘ill’, my mum would go into just the same cheery overdrive that Julie’s in now. She’d take me to a cafe and let me have ice cream for lunch and we’d skip down the road together and pick daffodils in the park to bring home and put in a vase.
“You don’t have to be cheery for my sake, you know.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m not.”
Chips is sniffing at my Dairylea triangle so I just let him eat it and Julie peels another one and gives it to him.
“I mean, I know you must be feeling crap with your mother... with losing your mum and everything.”
“I didn’t lose her,” Julie says, pouring herself another dandelion and burdock and vodka. “I lost her years ago and now she’s died and it’s not fair.”
I don’t know what to say. How can I know what to say? Julie’s the one who always knows what to say. Julie’s the one who’s calm in a crisis and now look at her.
“It’ll be OK, you know,” I say. Bloody lame but I have to say something. “I mean, I always try to think, ‘it’s like this now, but it won’t be like this forever’. One day I’ll be looking back on this and it’ll be in the past and I’ll just be able to think, oh yeah, that’s what it was like and that’s what it felt like then but I won’t feel like that forever.”
“No offence Marion, but you’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about.” She leaps up. “Doughnuts!” she says. “I forgot the doughnuts. Fancy forgetting the fucking doughnuts!” and she lurches forwards towards the kitchen, taking her drink with her. She comes back a minute later with a bag of doughnuts in one hand, her almost empty drink in the other and a doughnut stuffed in her mouth.
She flops down into the chair, plants the bag of doughnuts on my lap and takes the doughnut out of her mouth.
“You know,” she says, chewing as she talks. “I was never allowed doughnuts as a kid. My mum, the mum that you know, always said that stuff like this was full of the wrong sort of fats and would end up killing you if you ate too much of it, so better not to have any at all. I bet my real mum would have let me have doughnuts. What a stupid thing to say: too much will kill you so better not to have any at all. I think that’s stupid don’t you? I think that’s absolutely the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”
I look at my watch: it’s 12.15. He’ll be wondering where I am. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder what kind of parallel universe I’ve stumbled into and, more to the point, where the exit is so that I can stumble back out again.
There’s a voice at the back of my head saying just give her a big hug and tell her it’ll all be all right and then it will all be all right.
I try it. It doesn’t work.
“It won’t though, will it?” she says and stands up to pour herself another drink. “My mum is dead and I have to go and hear them read her will in a couple of days and I hardly knew her and she won’t be coming back and I’m not ready.”
I try the hug thing again but she’s not letting me. She’s not interested in my little hugs.
“God Marion, you’re so grin and bear it. In fact, not at all grin and bear it. Whinge and bear it. I think you must actually like it. I think you must enjoy being the martyr. Where would you be if you didn’t have something to whinge about? What on earth would there be to you if you didn’t have a crappy husband and a miserable marriage to harp on about? Poor old unfortunate Marion. And we all look after you and sympathise with you and listen to you and the record never changes and the ending is always the same and it’s all so predictable and boring, boring, boring. My mum let me be adopted and I didn’t have a choice, she kept me at arm’s length and I didn’t have a choice, she’s fucking died and left me for good and I didn’t have a choice and now I have to go and find out what she’s left me in her will and whatever it is I don’t want it but I have to take it because I haven’t got a fucking choice.”
She pauses for breath and I think she might be about to stop but she isn’t. She’s just putting her drink down and hauling herself up out of the chair to stand over me.
“But you, Marion,” she’s whispering now, but in a whisper louder than any shouting I have ever heard. “You,” her hands are on my shoulders. “You do have a choice. You can choose to leave the bastard and
get yourself a fucking life. So why don’t you?”
She stares at me for a moment and for a moment I can’t break her gaze. Her hands are on my shoulders and I look down to see her wrists all sinewy and strong with the charms on her bracelet swinging slightly to and fro. There’s a shoe and an owl and a tiny silver post box.
She lets go.
“I’d better go. He’ll be wondering where I am.”
“You’d better had,” she says.
And she marches out of the room and goes to open the front door for me. I pause to put Chips’ lead back on and follow her into the hall.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I say.
“You know what? You’re the least of my problems.”
I walk through the door and before I have chance to turn round and say anything else she closes it behind me and instead of her face I just see the beautiful stained glass panel that made me know that we both like the same things.
When I get home, the washing is on the line and He’s made me a sandwich.
“Nice walk?” He says, putting the kettle on.
“Yeah. Except one of the old folks that I’ve met out dog walking told me his dog’s died.”
“Oh dear,” He says. “That’s a shame. I’ve made you a sandwich. I made one for me too but I’ve not waited, I’m afraid. I was starving and I didn’t know what time you’d be back so I just ate mine.”
“Thanks,” I say and I sit and eat my sandwich slowly while He makes me a cup of tea and I get on with the post-normal, super-normal, everyday afternoon.
29
The water is cold tonight. Much colder than usual. It seems it to me, anyhow. It’s OK for those people who dive straight in at the deep end and go for immediate submersion: they have the cold sharp shock then the immediate distraction of having to swim before they sink. But I’m not one of them. I can’t do that. I don’t like to get my face wet and I don’t like to be out of my depth unless I’m already swimming first.
I get changed in my usual changing room. Number five, like the perfume. Marilyn Monroe said that No. 5 was all she slept in: when I heard that I tried it, but the smell of perfume put on freshly to go to bed just kept me awake. Anyway, my number five isn’t always empty when I get to the pool but tonight it is and I see that as a good sign. The swimming gods are smiling on me because my changing room is available, so I’m in for a good swim. But the minute I step onto the first stone step into the pool I can tell that the smiles are more like smirks. The swimming gods are laughing at me, taking the piss with this freezing cold water that has me covered in goose bumps before I’m even in to the knees.
But Tattoo Woman smiles at me and Gammy-leg Man is here, so it’s all OK. Just a bit cold.
“It’s fine once you’re in!” Tattoo Woman calls to me and I give her a grimace.
“Honestly,” she says.
I step slowly down into the pool, wincing and sucking in breath as I go.
“Just get yourself in,” says Tattoo Woman.
I think I preferred it when no-one here ever spoke to each other. Post-thug incident she seems to think she can badger me like an old friend. I’ll do it in my own time, thank you.
I smile at her and carry on inching my way down the steps. Eventually I take a deep breath and push off into the water. It is freezing. It’s like I remember the sea being as a kid, when you ran out from behind the windbreak and splashed all the way in to the waist, screaming. I can’t really scream here but I struggle to breathe for a minute and I’m shocked wide awake like I haven’t been all day; like I was all night last night.
The water moves differently when it’s so cold. Or perhaps it’s just me that moves differently. There’s more splashing and it feels like there’s more water than usual. It takes me longer to get to the other end of the pool and after five lengths, when I’m usually just getting started, I feel really tired. Really, really tired. But I’m here to do forty lengths: I should be able to do thirty-six… thirty at the very least.
So I swim on. I swim on and I just keep swimming. Counting and swimming. I try to focus on counting and not thinking, counting and swimming, not thinking, not thinking, just swimming and swimming and counting and swimming.
Twenty-one. I spurted wine out of my nose. What an imbecile. Twenty-two. What did Julie say when I spurted the wine out? What did her face look like? Twenty-three. Fox hunting. What did He say about fox hunting? She thought that was ridiculous didn’t she? Didn’t she? Twenty-four. Did He mean for her to see Him prodding me? Where was she when He did that? What did she say then exactly? I can’t remember what she said. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six... No, twenty-eight. How did we get on to the subject of Linda? Twenty-nine. Did that make her angry with Him or angry with me? Was she angry with me for letting Him bring it up in such a crass way? Is that it? Was she still angry when I went round yesterday? Thirty. That’s it, that must be it. She was angry with me and when He prodded me like that she just thought I deserved it. I handled the whole thing all wrong. I shouldn’t have let Him upset her. No wonder she disappeared so quickly. No wonder she was so cross with me when I turned up at hers with Chips. Thirty-two. But she said she was grateful to me for being the one to bring it all out into the open about her being adopted. She did say that. She definitely said that. Thirty-three. But she was angry at me yesterday. She was definitely angry at me. Thirty-four. Thirty-four. Thirty five.
I can’t remember what number I’m supposed to be on. I can’t remember what I was just thinking. I can’t think at all and then everything goes bonkers all at once. The pool attendant comes running up and jumps in the pool fully clothed and splashes across to me and grabs my chin and pulls me to the side and hoists me out onto the side and lies me face down with my arm under my head and I’m being sick and there’s a strange kind of shushing noise all over me.
“Are you OK love, are you OK?”
I’m cold. I’m really, really cold.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m cold though. I am quite cold.”
Out of nowhere, someone puts a towel over me and I can’t see who it is. I try to look around but all I can see is the big flying saucer lights above me and they look much bigger and much closer than usual.
And suddenly I’m sitting on a chair and Tattoo Woman is handing me a glass of water.
“Try and have a sip love. Have a little sip.”
I sip the water and look up. It’s not just Tattoo Woman, it’s the manager guy and the lifeguard and the woman from the front desk. The lifeguard is fully clothed but wet through with a towel round his shoulders. In the pool there are still people swimming but they’re all slow and quiet.
I take a sip of the water.
“That’s the ticket, love. How ya feeling now?” says Tattoo Woman.
Confused, mostly.
“Fine, I think.”
“Are you sure?” says the manager guy. I don’t like him. There’s something unpleasant about him. He sweats too much.
“I’m sure,” I say. “I’m just a bit embarrassed. What happened? What on earth happened?”
Tattoo Woman smiles at me. “You seemed fine one minute and then the next...”
“I think maybe you fainted or something,” says the lifeguard. “You just sort of sank in the water and I jumped in to get you and then you passed out again on the side of the pool.”
“We were wondering whether we should call an ambulance for you... Or maybe there’s someone you’d like us to call?”
“God no!” I say, mostly in response to the ambulance question and I try to get up out of the chair and I try to tell them that I’ll be fine now, thanks very much for all their help. “I’ll just get dressed, my car’s in the car park, I’ll be fine now, sorry about the drama.”
But the manager puts his clammy hand on my shoulder and Tattoo Woman shakes her head gently.
“There must be someone we can call?” Front Desk Woman chips in.
I think about the options: He’d be mortified and less than impressed that I’d embarrassed myself. Anyway, He will have had too much to drink by now to come and pick me up. Julie? Not sure she’d be that keen to come to my rescue after yesterday. Mandy? Not sure dragging a pregnant woman out to rescue me would be fair. And anyway, it’s all just so embarrassing and, stupidly, I just want my mum.
“There isn’t. And there’s no need. Honestly...” I look up a Tattoo Woman for a bit of back-up and she must be able to read my face.
“How about if I give you a lift home and you come and collect your car in the morning?”
“Really? That’d be so kind. That’d be great.”
“You’ll have to fill in an incident form and sign off to say that you didn’t want an ambulance to be called,” says the manager. I dislike him more with every syllable he utters.
“Fine,” I say, “That’s fine. Can I get dressed now?” I feel as if I’m at school, asking permission to go to the toilet.
“As long as you feel OK.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. Well, I’ll go and get the form and Peter will fill it in with you when you’re all ready.” The manager nods at the lifeguard and wanders off with Front Desk Woman, whispering his disbelief that Peter’s had to jump into the pool loud enough for me to hear him.
And by the time I’ve got changed, Tattoo Woman is standing fully clothed at the edge of the pool chatting to Peter the Lifeguard who’s now wearing dry clothes and sipping a cup of tea. He hands me the incident form on a clip board, some of which he’s filled out already, and shows me where I have to tick boxes to say whether his response to the incident was unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good or excellent and where I have to sign to say that they offered to call an ambulance or a family member and I refused.
I thank him again and I feel like I should give him a hug, or something a bit more substantial than the kind of thanks you give in a shop when the girl on the till hands you your change, but I’m just not one of those women that can hug people I don’t know. I settle for an ordinary thank you and a mental note to bring him a bottle of wine or something. That’s if I ever decide I can show my face in here again.
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